


3,127

by princessofmind



Series: The Long Distance Boyfriends [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Long-Distance Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-26
Updated: 2013-06-26
Packaged: 2017-12-16 06:01:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/858677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/princessofmind/pseuds/princessofmind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You swirl the numbers around your tongue like a fine wine.  3,127 miles between you.  An entire fucking country.  47 straight hours in a car, around 6 by plane, and you haven't figured how long it would take to walk, but you've certainly wondered.</p>
            </blockquote>





	3,127

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cul-de-sac (InkSkratches)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/InkSkratches/gifts).



You thought it would be easy.

Before you met Eridan, you weren't a terribly social person. In fact, it could be argued that you aren't a terribly social person even now. You like your solitude, and while you enjoy having him around more than you'll ever admit to, there are still times that you feel suffocated by his constant text messaging and insistance on coming over even if you're trying to get work done. So when the acceptance letters came in and it turned out that you were going to colleges on opposite ends of the country, you didn't react beyond an upgrade in your cell phone contract. Sure, you'd gotten used to seeing him in the halls and spending every waking moment eating his stupid Greek yogurt in your threadbare La-Z-Boy and working on his Spanish homework out loud while you were trying to work on trig, but you actually like being alone. You would always choose the solitude of a night home alone than a night out on the town, so the distance, which would require some adjustment, wasn't impossible.

Eridan didn't agree at all.

He wanted to go to the northeast with you, even apply for the same school despite the less stellar business program it boasted, and it took a lot of reassurances and promises of phone calls every night and text messages throughout the day and a visit over Christmas break to convince him to go to his top choice school out west. But despite his excitement at his posh apartment and orientation and the tentative friendships he was already building, he still sobbed into your shirt when you saw him off at the airport, clutching the thin material in his ring-heavy fingers as you stroked his hair and told him how he was going to be fine, how he was going to walk on campus the first day and just dazzle everyone with his ridiculously tight skinny jeans and perfectly matched scarves and that at least garnered a snotty laugh and his hand thumping against your back exactly once.

Something in your chest snagged, like the hem of a shirt stuck in a car door, something that didn't hurt but knocked you off balance, as you watched him walk away. You liked watching Eridan walk away from you, because his ass was one of the modern wonders of the world, but this time all you cold focus on was the elegant sweep of his neck and how his messenger bag had the end of his scarf pinned so it couldn't wave out behind him as he hurried towards security, head held high and his strides even. The odd feeling twisted in your stomach until he sent you a picture of his needlessly cushy first class seat and you thought of your own discount plane ticket sitting amidst the admissions papers on your desk with a rueful sigh.

And for the first week or so, you were right. Neither of you had time to be wistful, between unpacking and orientation and the first days of class. You still called, just like you promised, but the conversations were quick, with one or both of you exhausted from the day with another long one ahead. Despite knowing this, having a similarly busy schedule yourself, you still had trouble sleeping on the nights when he would yawn, voice gone all low and raspy, too tired to properly talk despite you being the one three hours ahead, asleep almost before you could finish telling him that you loved him.

After that hectic time, it crept up on you with increasing frequency and strength. It bothered you, to sit at your computer or pouring over one of your textbooks uninterrupted. You kept expecting a warm body to press against your back, draped over the chair, his chin digging into your collarbone as he whined about whether your stupid coding homework was more interesting than he was. Your tiny extra long twin felt like an ocean, a dark, unexplored section on your RPG map, and you didn't want to venture forth unaccompanied; you battled the sheets and craved a weight settling on top of the arm you would have wrapped about his waist, making the limb completely numb but a much more pleasant alternative to waking up cold and alone.

You swirl the numbers around your tongue like a fine wine. 3,127 miles between you. An entire fucking country. 47 straight hours in a car, around 6 by plane, and you haven't figured how long it would take to walk, but you've certainly wondered.

It starts creeping into your thoughts during class, stealing your attention from George Washington and the proper way to structure a speech and turning it instead to memories from inane to monumental. From your first kiss, at the lake on a field trip with your gym class, his hair soft and windswept under your fingers and his lips soft and pliant and warm behind the boathouse, to the way he would chew on the end of his mechanical pencils until he couldn't take them apart to put new lead in and would toss the broken utensil across the room in disgust and frustration.

And all at once, the phone calls and text messages and tweets weren't enough. You realized that your idea of solitude has changed to include him, because your computer and your bedroom walls used to be enough, with sporadic contact from your friends to fill that fundamental craving for human contact. But it isn't now, probably hasn't been for a long time and you just didn't notice, because he so jarringly yet flawlessly fit himself into all your routines. And part of you wants to say that he did it on purpose, attached himself like a leech to everything you did so you couldn't separate them from him, so you couldn't leave him, but you think that it may just be that he finds you as fundamental to his consumption of the world as you're now finding him.

"I miss you," you say, interrupting him with your rough sounding voice because you're still absolute dicks at communication or emotions period. "I really fucking miss you."

And the words just pour out like the levy finally broke, and your brain to mouth filter has never been especially functional, but you tell him how you miss seeing him speak, the expressions he makes, his hair, his stupidly blue eyes and even his obnoxiously over the top clothing. You feel disconnected from him, like he's not even a real person any more, just a creature you made up in between US History and too many sleepless nights. It could have gone on forever, because once you started, you realized just how many things you missed about Eridan Ampora, but thankfully he quiets you with soft little shushing noises, and his voice sounds kind of messed up too. (You can never emote without making him cry, which means you do it even less often than you normally would, but maybe it works better like this.)

"Dumbass," he sighs affectionately, lips too close to the phone in a way that makes the sound hum pleasantly, like there's a friendly bee or two settling on the plastic to keep him company. "I was beginning to worry."

The Skype calls start after that. The idea is sticky and saccharine, so traditional pining long-distance sweethearts that it makes you want to gag, but your frat boy roommate is never home and Eridan lives alone, so the only person to judge you is yourself, and you get over it pretty much instantly when you see him lounging in his bed, wearing one of your oversized Bioshock tees and his hair in an artfully arranged mess. You can actually watch his lips form the syllables of your name, see them turn up when you stammer and lisp all over your greeting and see them turn down when you tease him about his state of dress for your first "date".

It's stupid, the things you enjoy doing. Things like just sitting with the webcam on, him with his books and you focused on your computer, not speaking, just enjoying the illusion of having company while the both of you worked. Sometimes, but not often due to the time difference, he wants to fall asleep with you there, because just having the ability to crack his eyes and see you in profile, computer pushed away so it isn't just staring at your face while you do calculus homework, makes it much easier to sleep. You wonder if it would work as well for you, but your pride does have limits and that's one you just can't bring yourself to test.

You start having real date nights, where you stream an awful movie of the rock-paper-scissors winner's choosing, him usually settling in on his bed with a bowl of popcorn and you with a bag of dark chocolate M&Ms at your desk. It hasn't gotten to the point where you coordinate ordering food, like you're going out for dinner before the movie, but you kind of like the simplicity of the way it is now. Just two people enjoying a mutual interest with more desire for the shared experience than the actual consumption of the activity itself. The two of you spend more time bickering about the plot or the stupid characters than actually paying attention, anyways.

And you thought it would be enough, to see him flush bright red when you tease him, watch that distracted, tender smile flit across his face while you talk about your classes. But somehow it just makes the ache sharper, gives it a defined form. His lips are too thin, too pale, and you want nothing more than to redden them with your kisses, part them with your tongue and taste his stupid whitening toothpaste or the Thai he had for dinner. You want him in your arms, in your bed, be it for you to touch with purpose or just to hold again, warm and lithe and restless but above all present. And while you aren't the desperate sixteen year old that you were when you met him, you want him more than you ever have, desperate in a carnal way that extends beyond just sex, traipses into the desire for his bones and fingernails and the thrum of his blood under his skin. Every last bit of him you crave and miss, until you're counting down the days and hours and minutes and seconds until you can fly those 3,127 miles and wind up at his door.

You very nearly miss you flight due to oversleeping, because he kept you up so late that night, near frantic despite your impending departure, cheeks wet with tears as you soothe him with nonsense words that rumble in your chest and sneak slip through the microphones and down his spine just like they do when you're right there with him. He touches himself while you watch, curled on his side with his hand dipped between his thighs, face a bright red smear against the blurry purple of his comforter. The image quality isn't that great, but you can see his arm move, the way his legs move restlessly, lips parted as he breathes deep and long, whimpering and shuddering when he does something you can't quite see and you're so glad you've waited this long to try something like this, because if you weren't going to see him tomorrow, entice those sounds and countless more from deep within him with your own hands and fingers, you would go out of your fucking mind. He says your name when he comes, shaking and seizing and tossing his head, and all you have to do is palm yourself through your jeans before you're making a mess of the inside of your boxers.

It would probably be good to sleep on the flight, but all you can think about is how flippant you were when you left, how you didn't savor his skin or his smell or the texture of his clothes as you hugged him. How you'd been positive that you would remain unruffled by the distance, that you'd even be grateful for the break, when instead you watch the little map on the back of the headrest and count down from 3,127 to 0.

You shed your coat at the airport, because it's colder in Cambridge than it is here in Stanford, even in December, but you could be wearing a full arctic exploration suit in the middle of the tropics and not give a single fuck beyond getting your luggage and grabbing a cab. It's like you hail a taxi from the fourth dimension, because time literally stands still, you hit every fucking red light, and you're actually about to have some sort of episode before he pulls up in front of your destination. You couldn't answer a single question about the building for a million dollars, because you shove a wad of bills at the driver and haul your luggage into the building and fly up the stairs since the elevator is just too wretchedly slow.

He opens the door on the first knock, and it almost bowls you over to see him, here, smelling like Armani and hair gel, smiling so wide you can see every one of his perfectly white teeth. His appearance is immaculate in a way that you know means he's been agonizing over it for weeks and weeks before finally settling on something he deems passable for the event he's been looking forward to since August. You don't notice anything about his clothes aside from the fact that he looks _good_ and smells amazing and it feels like your heart is trying to beat right out of your chest and go fly a couple laps around Neptune so you don't bother trying to take it all in at once.

The suitcase clatters in the hallway as you seize him by the collar of his shirt and haul him close enough to kiss, fingers sliding into his hair and you almost weep at the softness, the texture, the flavor of English breakfast tea and honey on his tongue. He wraps his arms around you like he's bracing himself against a tidal wave, which you probably are at the moment, drinking the breath straight from his mouth as you press him against nearest wall, incoherent with the need to feel every inch of him against you.

You draw far enough away to see his eyes, hazy and overflowing with emotion, just as overwhelmed and jittery as you are, and all you can do is lean your forehead against his and try to breathe around the vice trying to tighten your rib cage to cracking. Knowingly, like he'd dreamed a thousand times of doing this, hadn't forgotten in the time apart, he traces the shell of your ear, moving across your sideburns to trace the sharp angles of your cheeks and the long curve of your nose and up to the sensitive skin right at the corner of your eye under your glasses.

"Hi," he says, breathless and giddy, and you kiss him slowly this time but with no less passion. It feels like agony, tastes like meals alone and nights in front of a webcam and trying to feel fulfilled with only subpar images and fake movie dates. But he's so present against you, breath hot against your cheek, that it steals the bitterness and replaces it with the familiar heat and teasing scathing remarks punctuated with eye rolls and half-hearted thrown objects, with nights twined around each other flipping through old D&D manuals or playing phone games until he starts to go cross eyed with exhaustion. He feels like the warmth of your bed, your favorite chair, the last Oreo saved just for you, and you're smiling just as stupidly when he moves to gasp for breath.

"Hey," you reply, and the words ring with a truer meaning, a concession made on an assumption from so many rainy days and cloudy nights and lengthy phone calls ago.

It hadn't been easy at all.


End file.
